When considering an Open-Source ERP software solution, you need to ask your solution provider or develop just how much of the software is open-source and how much of it your IT crew actually has access to. There's a huge difference between software that's labeled as "configurable" and software that's actually open-source enough that you and yours can make serious changes to.
Some of the ERP software available today is certainly configurable but it comes at a cost. The software itself is rather high-end, and has an equally rather serious price tag. Out-of-the-box, the software needs to be configured by your IT department into the software your facility can use based on how your workflows are arranged and what you make. This can actually take longer than expected. Some software like this is so complex that this configuration can take six months or more by someone in your IT department working full-time on the project to get it right. And then there's the testing period, with further changes being made as bugs are found and features are tweaked.
A better style of open-source software is software that's first configured by the software's developers for your specific purposes. This process may take a couple months before the software is ready for your company to use. At that point, however, the software is actually ready to use, not more than half-a-year down the road. The developers of the software may also offer classes on their software (for a fee) to instruct your IT people on how to best make changes to the underlying code. Once your people have completed these classes, changes to the facility or your manufacturing procedures which require changes to the software can be handled in-house without too much trouble.
Configuring software is one thing. Having real access to how your software is built, and having that software built right in the first place, that's something else entirely ... and is probably what you're actually looking for.
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